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Friday, July 16, 2010

Alpha 4 progress - Building fortifications & other stuff

Good progress with a major gameplay feature almost done.

The Police Station.
It's done. There is one Police Station in the city.
There are 3 levels : the entry hall on the surface, the offices level and the jails level.
There are cops and "guests"...
Cops are way too busy with rioting zombies in town, so you can do whatever you want down there.
Won't show screens of the building maps, its more fun to find out what can happen there the first time you will play.

Trackers display improvement.
I thought it would be nice to have the tracker display information on the map as well on the minimap. This will also be helpfull for the no-minimap people.

It looks like this, for all the 3 kinds of trackers (the cell phone, the Z-Tracker and "the other one" for "those guys"). Those trackers are already in Alpha 3.21 btw.

The Z-tracker, here used in the sewers. Some maps are always in darkness, so this could prove handy.

The Cell phone with my follower.

And finally, the "other tracker" for "those guys", here called "Pink Bunnies".

Building Fortifications.
With the Carpentry skill, you can build simple fortifications of two kinds, Small or Large.
Basically pushable speed bumps ("Small") and big walls ("Large").
It eats quite a lot of planks, so you can't really abuse it when fleeing. Its more meant as a mean of building... forts... When you reach 3-Carpentry building those will cost you one less plank.

Here's how it works and how it looks like.
I improvised a little fort to protect the Police Station. I made use of the cover provided by the very strong park fences and the cars.

Fortifications are not very resistant, I don't want the player to abuse them. After all, they are just hastily assembled pieces of wood.
You can see through both kinds of fortifications, but can only move (jump) through the small ones.

You will be able to repair fortifications (with the barricading action) , and order your followers to build ones.
I still have to work on these two features.

AI and Exits.
I did not mention that, but most actors can and will use the ladders and stairs just like you.
Expect annoying people disturbing you in your secret basement if you don't block the stairs.
And yes, Zombies too.
Zombie do yet not bash objects blocking the exits, I stil have to implement that.

Not trying to bitch or anything, but currently barricades are useless (the shelves, fridge's and desks, specifically), because of the fact that zombies can just move around them, you'd need 3 to properly barricade an entrance/exit unless you break the door down which defeats the purpose entirely.

Kabookie, I understand your point, but barricading is certainly not "useless".

- The barricading action is mostly meant to delay your enemies while you flee; even in late game you can always barricade broken windows, so make use of that, escape through them and always carry a couple of planks.

- As for needing 3 objects to block one tile that's WAD, unless you want zombies to move only in 4 directions. Destroying the glass door in shops for instance is actually a good tactic.http://roguesurvivor.blogspot.com/2010/05/building-your-own-little-fort.html

If it was easy to make a safe shelter the game would be... way too easy.

This game is like, le awesome sauce, especially considering it's still only in alpha x] I've been playing it solid for like the last two weeks, but after getting to like day 13, being eaten alive by black ops, and being a big wuss and trying to reload my save, only to realise it would take about half a day to do so, put me off a little :'[ It doesn't half guzzle resources ;_;

CHAR:CHAR attacking everyone is normal, they are kinda paranoid. They will still only attack people they warned once before. You can use their agressive behavior to your advantage : open the cage, say hello, run away, circle the building, get in.I'll add it to the FAQ.

RELOAD:Its related to .NET deserialization (loading saves). Don't understand why .NET goes bonkers when deserializing only a few Megs at max. Optimizing this is on the list, but not this version.I'll FAQ that too.